Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today we have
a lesson on lending and borrowing. When do
you say "lend" and when do you say "borrow"?
I know it can be a little bit confusing. Okay,
so I hope this lesson will help to clarify.
So, I've started with a quotation which says,
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be." That's
about money. I mean, you can lend and borrow
things other than money, but this is a piece
of advice spoken by a character in a play. You
may recognize it if you know your Shakespeare.
It's from Hamlet, and it's a character... It's a father talking to his son, and the
son is about to go away to another country, and the father is giving him some... What
he thinks is good advice. "Neither a borrower
nor a lender be." That's why the word order
is a bit strange because it's a poetic line from a Shakespeare play. So, anyway, that's
just a little introduction to the idea that
you can be a borrower and you can be a lender,
and they're different in some way. So, how
are they different? Well, let's have a look.
So, somebody might say, "Could you lend me
your pen, please?" And someone else might...
Or they might say... The same person might say, "May I borrow your pen, please?" But
they're asking the same thing here, but the
construction is just a bit different. They're
saying, "Could you lend me your pen?" So they're
asking for the pen to be given to them. Or,
"May I borrow your pen?" So, it depends on
who is doing the action. So, I hope this will
also help to show. So, you lend something to somebody, you give temporarily, you give
something to someone, they take it from you,
they borrow from you, you lend to somebody,
that person borrows from you. Okay? So, the
direction is from this person to that person.
This person is giving, lending, and this person
is borrowing, taking, temporarily, because
they're supposed to give it back again later.
Okay? So, "Could you lend me your pen?" or
"May I borrow your pen?" It means the same
thing, but it depends who is doing the lending
or the borrowing. So, let's just try a little
example here so that you can work out which...
Which word belongs in the gap. So, "I never ______ money to anyone." Or, "She is always
trying to ______ money from people." So, remember
we've got "to" and "from" here, which is a
clue. You lend to, you borrow from, so that should help you to work out how to fill in
these two gaps, which one is "lend" and which
one is "borrow". Okay. So, "I never ______",
so it's to do with giving. "I never give/lend."
Okay? So, "I never lend money to anyone, but
then another person, she is always trying to
take/borrow." Okay? "Borrow". "She is always
trying to borrow money from", so this is "to",
"lend to", and this is "from", "borrow from".
Okay? So, those prepositions help you sometimes to work it out.
So, okay, I hope that's clear. But then in the
past tense, we just have to be a bit careful
with the past forms because "to lend" is an
irregular verb, so the past form of "to lend"
is "lent". "I lent", "you lent", "he lent". It's
the same for all, all the pronouns, singular and
plural. "We lent", "they lent". It's the same
all the way through, but it's irregular. So,
we've got "lend" with a "d", then "lent" with
a "t". But then "borrow" is a regular verb,
so you just put "ed" on the end. "Borrowed", "borrowed". Okay?
So, again, we've got two sentences here with gaps, so it's the same situation
said in two different ways. So, "Yesterday, Anne _____ my pen" and didn't return it.
"Yesterday, I _____ Anne my pen" and she didn't
return it. So, which word goes in which gap?
So, one person does the lending and another person does the borrowing.
So, "Yesterday, Anne", and this time you haven't
got the "to" and the "from" to give you a clue,
so... Because they don't always appear, so you have to just work out. So, "Anne
did something with my pen", so what did she do? She took it, didn't she?
"You gave it, but she took it", so "Anne borrowed...
Anne borrowed my pen", she did the borrowing,
the taking, and she didn't return it. So,
then it's the other one in this gap. "Yesterday, I lent", "I gave", "I lent Anne
my pen", and she didn't return it. And if you
put the name of the person immediately after,
you don't say "I lent to Anne", I just... "I
lent Anne", you don't need the "to" in there.
So, that means you don't always have the little prepositions to help you
to know which it is. So, "Anne borrowed", "I lent", "I gave", "She took". Okay.
Right, so I hope that helps to give you a way of
working out whether to use "lend" or "borrow".
It's all about what direction it's going in,
giving or taking. Okay? And "to" or "from".
Right, so if you'd like to do a quiz on this topic, just go to the website,
www.engvid.com, and see how you do. I hope
that's been helpful. Thank you for watching.
I hope to see you again soon, and bye for now. Bye.